Glimpses
by rabidsamfan
Summary: Another catchall story, this one for pieces with slashy or mature elements that not all my readers will wish to read. Includes "Haunted" and "Revenant".
1. Haunted

Shortly before the first anniversary of the battle of Maiwand, I was summoned to Buckingham Palace, along with the other survivors of that debacle, to receive a medal for my service in the campaign. For a few hours I stood again with men whose eyes saw the same ghosts and whose tongues fell into the same easy mishmash of Hindu and Dari and Army slang. The 66th ceased to exist that day, officially, the survivors being pulled into a new regiment, and while no one could say that we were content to know that a glorious defeat would write the end of an honorable history, at least a new beginning seemed better than being scattered to the four winds.

And yet, as a medical officer, I stood in a peculiar position, one which was only emphasized as we were marched in to stand before the queen. With the reorganization of the Medical Service I had no formal tie to the Berkshires -- we stood apart, Surgeon-Major Preston and I, with the other medical personnel, and felt keenly the absence of Murray and our other English orderlies, all of whom had been assigned to hospitals in India in the interim. The ceremony was soon over, and I was left restless and dissatisfied. There had been great comfort in being among men who understood, as no civilian could, the exigencies of war, however much the thought of returning to battle made my scars ache and my dreams worsen. A taste of that comradeship had awakened a hunger for more, as a touch of curry stirs a desire for all the spices of the Orient.

I purchased a kitbag and stocked it with instruments from pawnshops and assorted nostrums from the local chemist, and then took to trying to resurrect my professional skills in anticipation of the medical review that might somehow find me fit enough to send back to my duties. Fortunately the free clinics were desperate for volunteers. By early July it was clear that the summer would be one of the hottest in memory, and the sweltering weather doubled the number of collapses in the poorer districts, and tripled the incidence of febrile convulsions in very young children due to bad food. So many of the parents had no real way to keep food from spoilage that I found myself advising mothers to keep their babes on the breast until the weather turned cool. We bathed our patients in tepid water, again and again, and thanked mercy for the clinical thermometers which gave us some certainty that our efforts were not in vain. There was no money in it, of course; my only compensation lay in knowing by the end of the day that the lives I had saved outnumbered the lives I could not.

Holmes was not nearly as inured to the heat as I was, nor were his clients, and every day that the mercury soared saw him idle and irritable. As the dog days reached their worst, an intractable silence from my fellow lodger made me glad that I had stumbled upon alternatives to provide the companionship and work which were my best cure for the melancholy that was never far from me that season. I rose early and worked late, avoiding newspapers until the days bled into one another. The 27th passed in a haze, but the grief would not go, and I worked on, never dreaming that come August my life would once again be interrupted by catastrophe.

* * *

I was walking home, not long before sunset, on the second day of that month, and had no sooner passed the entrance of the Gower street station when I felt something like a bomb going off beneath the pavement. For a moment I had hopes it was an earthquake, but then the eerie echoes of the train whistles came up the ventilation shafts, crying disaster. The heat had warped the rails of the underground, and one train of two had slewed into the wall of the tunnel and then rebounded against the other, just west of the crowded platform. Luckily, a bright shopkeeper understood the immediate need and provided those of us who were willing to help find and free the victims trapped below with a boxful of candles, one of which I lit before descending into that merciless, fœtid hell.

I stumbled home in the first dim light of morning, reeking of carbolic and blood and soot. By some miracle the bolt had not been thrown and my key was sufficient to allow me entrance, but I was so exhausted that the steps up to our sitting room were beyond me. I sat on the lowest of them instead and leaned against the wall with my eyes closed, waiting for some measure of energy to return. My left shoulder ached incessantly. I had not done any amputations since Afghanistan, and I had forgotten how much strength they required from both arms.

I fell into relentless contemplation of the scenes I had just witnessed. The oppressive heat had called to mind the carnage of Maiwand again and again as we sifted through the human and mechanical wreckage in the subway, and the darkness had held as many terrors as the long retreat to Candahar. Worse, the fresh calamity promised to haunt me near as often as the old. The accident had been an accident, and not the product of malice, thank God, but there had been no children on the battleground.

"Doctor?"

I startled, having been too wrapped up in my bleak thoughts to notice Holmes coming down the stairs, and bit back a curse when the movement jarred my scar. "Yes," I managed after a moment.

He was clad in nothing but his dressing gown, and barefoot, as if he'd risen in haste from his bed. As he crouched beside me the folds open to reveal more than a mere glimpse of his long, muscular legs, but I was in such wretched condition I scarce noticed. "You _were_ at Gower Street," he said. "I went looking for you, but there was such chaos aboveground as well as below that the police had barred access for three blocks 'round the station entrance."

"I'm sorry," I mumbled. There had been no chance to send word, and in truth I had had no expectation that he would even notice my absence. His own black moods required solitude and time to overcome -- so he had told me upon our earliest acquaintance and experience had proven him correct. Given the state I had last left him in I had expected another two days would pass before he found his way out of his depression. "I didn't mean to worry you."

"That's all right." One long hand hovered for a moment near my forehead, as if he could gauge the heat coming off of my bare skin. "You've lost your hat."

"Yes." I'd lost my wallet too, to some opportunistic young pickpocket. Not that it would profit him much. I closed my eyes, trying to summon up the will to move.

Something tugged on my sleeve. "Here," Holmes said. "Drink this."

From somewhere he had found a carafe of water and a glass. And _ice_. A few chips of it floated in the carafe, clinking softly against the sides with each movement. I stared at the moisture collecting on the outside surface of the vessel, wondering how on earth he had procured ice when the poor clinic had not been able to find any for days, not for love nor money.

"Here," he said again, settling beside me and bringing the cool glass to my lips. "You need to drink a little."

Not since Peshawar had anyone cosseted me in such fashion, but so much did I want the water that my pride made no objection. Holmes' hands were cooler than my own, and steadier, and he controlled my first few sips until it became apparent that the water would stay down. "That's better," he said as I revived somewhat. "Still thirsty?"

"Yes." _Always_. At times I felt as if I should never completely wash the dust of Afghanistan out of my throat.

As soon as I'd emptied a second tumblerful, he curled an arm around me to draw me upright. I would have allowed that too, had not my shoulder protested. "No. Please."

"You weren't on the train," he said, as he deftly switched his grasp from my left elbow to my waist and raised me to my feet. It was a statement, not a question, though I had no idea how he had deduced the difference. "But you've been hurt."

"It's nothing. Just my arm," I told him as I tried to find my balance. "I'll be all right once I've had a bite to eat." Truth to tell, I was not hungry, but I dreaded the thought of sleep. A hundred nightmares were lurking, and I knew it. "There's no point in going to bed," I added, defensively, when he raised a skeptical eyebrow. "It's nearly morning."

His gaze flickered over me, and I saw his jaw tighten on some injudicious comment. But then he nodded acquiescence to my intransigence. "Mrs. Hudson won't be awake any time soon," he warned me. "But that's just as well. You'll have time to clean up."

I didn't have the strength to wield a washcloth, nor yet the strength to argue, but as I clearly couldn't get up the stairs to our sitting room without assistance, I made no protest. To my dismay, however, once we had managed the stairs he steered a course for the bathing room. "Holmes," I began, but he forestalled me.

"You're filthy, and you've got blood everywhere -- including your hair. One look and our good landlady won't be making you breakfast, she'll be sending round for a physician. If you'd wanted one, you'd have had the sense to go to hospital."

I shuddered at the thought. Every hospital in the vicinity must still be echoing with the cries of the injured and the dying. "I'm all right," I told him.

"Not yet," he said calmly. "But you will be." He settled me on the closed commode and went about lighting the gas and the geyser and fetching towels and my dressing gown and nightshirt. I waited, too weary to do more than fend off sleep. In a few moments he was back, and kneeling before me as he tugged off my boots and stockings. The tiles of the floor felt cool beneath my soles and I closed my eyes to better enjoy the sensation as Holmes moved higher and began to unfasten the buttons of my waistcoat. "It's just as well that this was your second best suit," he observed conversationally, "because there's no saving it. I doubt even dyeing it black will hide the stains."

"Cold salt water for blood," I told him. That one I knew, even in my sleep.

"And what for soot, and tar, and rust, and...," he frowned and touched a dark patch on my knee. "Coffee?"

I shook my head and muttered a denial. I would have remembered coffee.

He rose and swiftly helped me draw off jacket and waistcoat, but slowed his movements when it came to my shirt. Ever since Maiwand I had had some difficulty with pulling my shirts off, and even the longer placket which my tailor had decided upon was insufficient to prevent pain when the wound was irritated. To my surprise, Holmes seemed to know this already, though I had never yet undressed in his presence. He eased the cloth free of my good arm and head first and only then slipped it away from the bad shoulder. I wondered, distantly, what he would make of the livid scars on my back and the misshapen ruin of my scapula but I could not hold the thought. The darkness behind my eyelids swirled with small points of light, like candles in a smoke-filled tunnel, like the glimmers of stars in a merciless night, and the flicker of gunfire from the villages and ravines.

"No!" I was awake again, standing upright, and Holmes was holding me from behind, my arms pinioned to my sides as if to prevent a wild blow. I could feel my trousers sliding down my hips, the sweat running down unimpeded to my abdomen.

"Easy, Watson, easy. Try to stay awake a little longer." My fellow-lodger was still calm, still deliberate in his movements as he freed one hand to finish working the buttons of my fly. Beneath my linens I felt my member grow tauter, responding to his touch. I brought my hand up to meet his, to take over the task, and he made a soft sound that I could not identify as impatience or laughter. "It's all right, Doctor. I don't mind."

"I can bathe myself," I mumbled, still leaning against his strength.

"You'll drown if you try," he asserted, and now I could hear the amusement in his voice, and feel an answering trickle of heat against my lower back. "Just let me do the work." He'd managed the buttons, and I felt my trousers drop to puddle at my ankles. The knot of my underlinens was trickier, but I was still so thin that it was no great matter to tug them downwards past any obstacles until they too fell. My prick sprang to half-mast in the cool of the air, and had I had any strength for it I might have been embarrassed, but that Holmes seemed to find nothing untoward about the situation. "Lift your foot clear," he told me, moving his knee up behind mine to compel me to comply. "And the other... that's right. Now into the tub with you."

The enamel felt cold under bare skin -- too cold indeed, for I began to shiver, and I was glad when Holmes started the water from cistern and geyser and it began to bubble up warm from the drainhole. He knelt beside the tub and took up washcloth and soap, and I closed my eyes as he set about cleaning my hair and face. He had such a gentle touch -- not like some of the orderlies at Peshawar, who had slopped water carelessly and scrubbed roughly as they searched out traces of the diarrhea which was the inevitable consequence of enteric fever. There'd been one fellow who seemed to glory in making his charges sob with fright, or scream, as the baffled civilians had screamed in the black darkness of tangled metal and wood so far beneath the cobblestones. It had taken hours to find them all, to make sure that no one would be left behind in the dark, and some of the worst hurt had failed even as I sought out their injuries, their dead hands clutching at my sleeves.

"No!" In twisting away from the memories I lost what little balance I had, and skidded down in the tub, striking my bad arm hard against the tub wall and only saved from a mouthful of soapy water by Holmes' hand behind my neck. Tears sprung into my eyes, as much from fright as pain, and I gulped for air, trying desperately to regain my composure.

Holmes' lips had gone thin and tight across his face, and his eyes were dark with thought. "This isn't working," he declared as he maneuvered me back to a sitting position. He stood and divested himself of his dressing gown, hanging it on the hook by the door. He was naked underneath, and nearly as white as a marble statue except for the dark thatch of hair at the base of his belly and the blush of curiosity lightly swelling his cock and balls. "With your permission?" he said, but did not wait for a reply before clambering into the tub and positioning himself behind me. "It's a good thing that the late Mr. Hudson was a man of noble proportions," he observed, as he arranged his long legs like the arms of an overstuffed chair to either side. "This is much more efficient."

"Efficient?" I echoed as he settled me back to lean against his chest. My heart was still racing, and I could not say if the cause was the lingering shock of nearly drowning or something else again. No one had held me like this in far too long.

"Yes," he said. "And more comfortable too. I was getting a knot in my back leaning over the side of the bath like that."

"I'm sorry," I said, although I was not sure what I was apologizing for.

"Think nothing of it, old fellow," Holmes said softly near my ear. He finished plying the washcloth along my left side and transferred it to his other hand, laying his left arm protectively across my chest. I let my head fall back against his shoulder, let my eyes close again as I allowed myself to feel the smoothness of his skin beneath me and the sweep of his hand moving down below the waterline. He cupped his hand around my balls and I stiffened, reaching out and feeling my fingers stub against the geyser handle. "Easy," Holmes whispered. "Easy. You need better dreams, anyone can see that. And prostitutes are expensive and inconvenient and I am already here."

"That's what Daniel always said," I told him, as I relaxed, remembering another pair of arms, and another hand running languidly along my shaft.

"Daniel?"

"He was a subaltern in the Fusiliers," I murmured, though Daniel had been part and parcel of my life long before either of us had ever been beckoned by the sound of a drum. "And a friend. But he died."

"In Afghanistan?" Holmes wondered softly, still letting his hand explore.

I shook my head. "Before I ever reached Bombay," I meant to answer, but I have no recollection of whether I did so. Not even the knowledge that I should somehow reciprocate for Holmes' kindness could keep me waking. My mind had gone back to a summer I should never have forgotten, when death had been something that happened to old men and not to boys of less than twenty. The dreams welcomed me, and I was glad to go.

* * *

Based on a magnificent piece of artwork by spacefall


	2. Revenant

But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn,  
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.  
-- _The Soldier's Dream_ -- Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)

* * *

I woke to find myself tucked up in bed wearing a threadbare nightshirt which fit badly, a half empty carafe of water and a glass on the bedtable beside me and a stiff, dry, fever rag fallen to the pillow next my head. My left arm had been immobilized, much to my dismay, and I could smell the sour miasma of illness in the modest room and taste the bitter dregs of laudanum in the crevices of my teeth. My head was thick with drugs and nightmares, and for the longest time I could not place myself in space or time. Against the windowpane the rain was splashing, and a blink of lightning heralded more of the thunder that had set my pulse to thrumming like the wings of a startled hummingbird.

"Mrs. Hudson!" The familiar cry from below echoed up through the floor ventilator and told me I was in London. "Mrs. Hudson, have you seen... ah, there it is!"

Baker Street then, but when? Winter? Spring? My eyes picked out strange faces and distorted creatures in the patterns of the wallpaper as I tried to work out which memories were real. I'd had a relapse, that was clear enough, and God only knew how much of myself I'd lost to the fever this time. But why? Surely the nightmare of fresh hours spent in darkness and despair could not be true.

"He was still asleep, last time I looked." Holmes' voice, and closer, and two sets of footfalls on the stairs. "But he's been much cooler since the weather broke."

"So have we all," said the second voice, which was all the warning I had before my old commander stepped through the door.

I tried to sit up, in spite of myself, and was pleasantly surprised when I nearly managed it. Surgeon-Major Preston quickly came to my rescue, adjusting the pillows so that I could rest propped up to face him. "Hoy, there, Watson," he chided me cheerfully. "You've overdone enough for now, don't you think?"

He was in uniform and looked much the same as he had when I was first his patient at Khushk-i-Nakud in February of '79. Thinner perhaps, and paler, but blessedly free of the blood that had soaked through his clothing in the sweltering chaos of Maiwand when he had briefly been my patient in his turn. Still his appearance seemed somehow odd to my laggard comprehension. "Overdone?" I echoed, hoping I might yet find firm ground.

He lay a hand on my forehead and studied my eyes. "Too much, too soon," he confirmed. "From what Mr. Holmes tells me you were working yourself towards a collapse even before that mess at Gower street."

"The trains!" It wasn't a nightmare, or a delusion brought on by drugs and fever. The realization would have had me out of the bed if it weren't for Preston's hand on my good shoulder . "Did we find them? Did we get them all out?"

"You did, Doctor," Holmes said, displaying a newspaper from his station in the doorway. He spread it out so that I could see the headlines. _ Seventeen dead, dozens injured in underground collision. Praise for the swift actions of the Metropolitan police and passersby. _ "The surviving engine driver was the last person brought out, and that was more than an hour before you came home."

"Seventeen?" I frowned. It seemed to me that there had been more, but I had learned the hard way to distrust any memory that was tangled with fever dreams.

"More have died of their injuries since, of course," Preston said matter-of-factly. "Does that fragment in your leg give you any trouble?" he asked, laying a gentle hand over the scar near my ankle which marked my disastrous introduction to the dangers of the Afghan campaign.*

"Only when it rains," Holmes offered, when I failed to answer. My mind was elsewhere, and not to be distracted by aches to which I had grown accustomed over the past two years.

"More died, you say?" I asked anxiously.

"Eight, I believe, at last count," Preston said as he began to unwind the bandage that held my left shoulder and arm in position. "But the engine driver appears to be doing well, even without his legs. They revised the left amputation to above the knee, but I'm told you did as decent a job as might be expected in cramped quarters and bad light with the right leg."

"There was a youngster who helped me with the right," I explained, the flitting memories of dirty faces by candlelight settling for a moment on a single countenance. "A bobby... James, I think he said his name was."

Holmes brightened. "Ah, that might explain why the _Telegraph_ had you named as James Dodson. I notified them of the error, of course."

"Which is what brought me into it." Preston had the bandage away and he reached inside the opening of my shirt to prod at my shoulder. "Does that hurt?"

I bit down on the answer I would have preferred to give. "Yes." If I kept my eyes closed for a moment the sudden heat in them would fade. But the pain was not nearly as bad as it could be, once the initial surprise at his touch passed. "It's stiff from disuse," I decided, unwilling to concede more damage than I must.

Preston nodded. "Try raising your arm."

I could do that, if I went carefully and didn't venture too far. "What did I do to it this time?" I asked.

Holmes answered, an odd note in his voice. "You fell off the settee. Don't you remember?"

"No." Nothing like that. And what little I did remember seemed an idle fantasy, far more unlikely than the nightmare of the train accident. "Whyever was I on the settee?"

A faint spot of color showed itself on my fellow-lodger's cheekbones. "I thought it would be easier to keep an eye on you if you were in the sitting room," he said. "But I became absorbed in trying to determine the cause of each of the stains on your suit -- purely as an academic exercise, you understand -- and failed to notice when you grew restless."

"Holmes," I began, meaning to ask how long ago that had been, but I had no chance. Instead I gave a cry of pain as Preston tried to push my arm higher than the level of my shoulder. "Ah! No! It won't go that far."

"Sorry, John. Rotate the arm for me, as far as it will go in each direction without pain." I felt a chill when Preston used my Christian name. He almost never did that except when he was going to give the patient a diagnosis they'd not want to hear.

Still, _pain_, he'd said, and not discomfort. Setting my jaw to keep from making another sound, I did as I'd been told. I could bring my arm inward across the front of my chest all right, as long as I kept it low, and raise it in front or to the side straight out with only a bit of wobbling. But much higher than that, or back behind it would not go, not for all my trying. I had to give up and stop to breathe. "I must have bruised it," I gasped.

Preston shook his head, his eyes kind, but unyielding. "Did you have much more range of movement before?" he asked.

"A little." But my own eyes fell. I watched my right hand trying to knead the ache out of my left feeling as if neither quite belonged to me. "A few degrees more in front, perhaps. Enough for most things."

"But not for everything."

I knew what he was trying to say. "I managed well enough in the Underground," I protested.

Preston snorted. "Several of the fractures needed to be reset, two of the dislocations weren't reduced correctly, your splint bandaging was uneven, and the sutures on those amputations looked like they were done by a drunken monkey," he enumerated mercilessly, but then his tone softened. "Face it, John, you're not up to doing surgery, not properly. And combined with the collapse, it's clear that you simply aren't able to return to duty."

"They've taken _you_ back," I realized. That was why he was in uniform, even though he'd been wounded the same day as I had. This was an official visit.

"For paperwork," he said. "And teaching. And for giving bad news to men like you who haven't the sense to know that they're still convalescent."

I still didn't want to hear it. "What about the clinic? Surely _they_ didn't think me incompetent."

"But most of that work was medical, not surgical." Preston was relentless. "Lancing an abscess is not the same as the kind of work as you need to be able to do on a battlefield. You know it as well as I do." He touched my good arm and waited until I looked into his face again. "I'm no happier about it than you are, man. You were one of the finest assistants I've ever had -- a good man in a tight spot. But I'd be doing a disservice to you and to the Department if I went back to the board and said you were capable of the work in your present state."

For some reason, I looked to Holmes, as if he were the final court of appeal. But he had slipped away, proving a neat sense of delicacy. He, no doubt, had deduced Preston's intentions long before I had myself. Without him as my bulwark I had no defense. "I could help with the paperwork," I offered.

"You'd hate it even more than I do." Preston smiled ruefully. "You were thrown in headfirst out there, believe me. Peacetime service is nothing like what you're used to."

"It's got to be better than doing nothing," I protested.

"If you'd been doing _nothing_, instead of working yourself into the ground at that plague-ridden clinic and laying yourself open to every wretched fever in London, you might -- and I say only _might_ -- have been able to fool the board into putting you on light duty," Preston informed me testily. "Very light duty. It isn't the shoulder, John, though you'll have to find a way to work around it if you mean to continue surgery. It's the enteric fever that's the difference between your recovery and mine. I've read the reports -- you were far closer to death in Peshawar than you were on the road to Candahar, you simply weren't in any case to know it. Give yourself a chance to heal. Perhaps next year will be different."

"Another year..." Another idle, useless year and I'd be fit for nothing but sitting by the fire. I said as much, though not in terms which would bear repeating, and to add to my disgrace, I could not keep the tears from flowing. If they had any effect on Preston, it was only to make him adamant. He allowed that I might sleep better without the bandages on my arm, and conceded that the opiates he prescribed were unlikely to be conducive to the kind of weight gain which he thought I should achieve before returning to the service, but insisted nonetheless that I take the dose of salicylic acid powders which he prepared for me.

"I'll have your landlady send up some broth," he promised as he rose and began collecting his things back into his bag. "And I'll recommend to the board that your pension be continued. But for now, rest, and let yourself heal."

No sooner had he gone than I realized that I had missed the opportunity to ask for his assistance with certain necessities. Setting my jaw, I pushed away the thin blankets and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, taking care not to move too quickly. The ceramic convenience was under the bed, but being uncertain of my own condition I disliked the thought of bending over to collect it. I had a memory -- or was it many memories? -- of the sudden vertigo which had sent me to the ground in Peshawar. I tried to ease down to my knees instead. If the rug hadn't slid out from under me the maneuver might have succeeded. As it was I landed harder than I expected, and was still cursing my own incompetence when Holmes appeared, carrying a tray with a bowl.

"Doctor?" he said.

"Don't call me that," I snapped. Preston had put an end to that title, for now, and perhaps for always.

Holmes pulled his head back as if I'd struck him on the nose, but he didn't retreat. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." I couldn't use my right hand, as it was occupied in keeping me from tipping over entirely, and my left was still tucked tight against my chest in hopes that the pain in my shoulder would ease, so I nodded to the chamberpot blindly. "I just needed to use..."

"Ah. Of course." Holmes set the tray on the dresser and made as if to come to my assistance.

Months of fever in India should have inured me to the indignities of being an invalid, but I found myself mortified by the thought of subjecting my fastidious fellow-lodger to the unpleasant realities of my condition. "I can manage by myself," I cried, shying away from his touch. "Just let me..." My head was spinning, my gorge rising. "Oh, God, Holmes, I think I'm going to be sick."

I have no desire to recount the events of the next several minutes. Leave it to suffice that I did require Holmes' assistance, which I accepted with very bad grace, and that before long I found myself in bed again, shaking with exhaustion, wearing yet another nightshirt that must have come from my poor fellow-lodger's supply.

Holmes was silent as he collected the soiled linens and bundled them together, and his mouth was set in a thin straight line. He was seldom uncertain of himself, but the symptoms were unmistakable, and I knew myself to be the cause. He hadn't bargained on playing nursemaid when we'd agreed to share lodgings!

"I'm sorry," I said wretchedly. "But if you can tolerate me for a few more days -- until I've the means to shift to new quarters..." I'd need somewhere smaller -- and cheaper -- if circumstances required me to hire any kind of caretaker, but better that than returning to a hospital ward.

"Tolerate you?" Holmes said, smiling at me. "My dear fellow, I'm the one who engages in malodorous chemical experiments before breakfast." But then his smile faltered and he turned to wash his hands at the basin. "Or is that why you wish to go?"

"No. But I..." I tried to find the right words to explain. Without the Army, or any real chance of returning to work at the clinics I knew myself to be as unwelcome as the gift of a white elephant. "It's just... I don't intend to be a burden to anyone but myself."

His brow cleared, although he still did not look up. "I can assure you that it is not your presence which I would find burdensome, but your absence. Baker Street has suited me and my work very well indeed, and I should prefer not to remove to other quarters. I would find it equally distasteful to discover myself once again forced to choose between my tobacco and the rent."

"You knew I was facing a medical review. You must have planned to find another man to take my place had I passed the examination," I said.

"I did," Holmes agreed, drying his hands meticulously. "But I had come to the conclusion that the process would be lengthy. And an indefinite period of being obliged to produce the entire sum would almost certainly prove to be... inconvenient."

"And expensive," I said, grudgingly glad to know that while _I_ might not be worth salvaging, my wound pension would still earn me a welcome.

Holmes flushed to the tips of his ears. "Ah. You do remember then." _Remember?_ I stared as he faced me and gave a stiff, uncomfortable nod. "I apologize. It was an unconscionable liberty on my part."

"An unconscionable… Wait! Holmes!" I cried, for he had turned to leave, and I could not stand to spend the rest of my life wondering whether or not the dream I'd had of cool water and a warm embrace was more than just a dream. "I'm not sure I do remember. The laudanum -- it makes it hard to sort things out. But I have no memory of being offended. Nor of being offended against. Not by you." I felt my own ears heating. "Only kindness." I studied the counterpane, wishing I dared to be more forthright. It was not a matter of virginal coyness -- I'd often found recourse to the inconvenience and expense of the ladies of the evening, with Daniel at first, and on my own after he'd been posted to India -- and there had been more than one soul in Afghanistan willing to undertake a passage at arms with me to stave off grief or fear. But no one since Maiwand. Not since bullet and fever had broken me. Still, if Holmes had, by some strange miracle, found the ruin of my body worthy of attention then perhaps he might forgive me all the trouble I was causing him. But I could not say so, not in those words. And I could scarcely confess, even to myself, that I was so desperate to be useful that I would willingly consent to being used. "Do you ever need better dreams?" I asked, barely above a whisper.

"No," he said, and I closed my eyes, the ashes of even that small hope bitter on my lips. But then I felt his weight settle on the bed beside my legs. I looked up and found him pale, but far more composed. "I almost never remember the dreams I have while I'm asleep," he said, and a small smile flittered across his face. "A circumstance for which I find myself glad, of late. Yours sound terrible."

"They are," I admitted. Although knowing that he could find something to smile about gave me some ease, I was still uncertain of my position – and I had yet another factor to add to the score. "I hope I wasn't so loud as to disturb you."

"Not at all, my dear fellow." Holmes kept fidgeting, plucking bits of dust and clumps of fiber from the worn places on the covers. "Dr. Ferguson thought that the laudanum would ameliorate them, despite the fever, but all it seemed to do was make you think you were in India again." Again that glint of amusement. "I had to hunt out my dictionary of Hindustani to be certain of what you were asking for."

"Oh, good God," I said, unable to see any humor in having discommoded him so greatly. "I'm sorry. I'll find some way to recompense you for your lost time."

"I had nothing better to do," he said.

"Your clients..." I began, and he laughed merrily.

"What clients? Watson, it was only yesterday morning you fell ill!"

"Then why am I so weak?" I snarled, overwhelmed by a fresh wave of unruly emotion by his unseemly glee.

"Because you've hardly eaten," Holmes answered promptly. "Fergusen thought you'd do less damage to your shoulder if you were too heavily sedated to move about, but it's made getting anything more than sips of lemon water into you very complicated."

"Fergusen is an antiquated idiot," I growled, glad to find another target for my anger. "I _hate_ being so far under that I can't make myself wake up."

"I'll make a note of that," Holmes said, still irrepressibly amused. "But given that you're awake now, would you like some of the broth Mrs. Hudson sent up?"

"It won't stay down," I protested.

"It might."

"And if it doesn't? Don't tell me you're going to want to clean up after me all over again."

"A temporary inconvenience," Holmes said gaily, dismissing the possibility with a wave. He was practically dancing as he got up to collect the tray from the dresser, his gangling long limbs seeming all the longer, and his face alight as it had been the moment I first met him. A wave of jealousy passed over me as I watched him move with all the strength and vitality of youth that would never be mine again.

"Temporary?! Holmes, the last time I developed a fever I was derelict for months!" Exasperated beyond discretion by his demeanor, I began to enumerate the difficulties he did not seem to see. "The Army won't have me back; I botched the work I did at Gower Street; and all I appear to have accomplished at the clinic is to expose myself to more pathogens than what little health I still possessed can withstand. God knows when I'll manage to get out of this blasted bed."

"Well, you've certainly managed to sit up under your own power," Holmes observed blithely. "Hold still a moment." He balanced the tray on one hand while he used the other to position the pillows to support me. "That will do nicely."

I sank back against them, still glaring at my unpredictable companion. "Holmes..." I began, but he over-rode me masterfully.

"If you don't drink some of this for me, Mrs. Hudson will be up to pour it down your throat," he warned me. "Just take it slowly, a little at a time, and you can stop if you begin to feel uncertain. Here. Careful now." He settled beside me once more and put the pewter invalid cup into my good hand. "I realize," he went on, as I forced myself to take the first sip, "that I must seem ridiculously pleased with your misfortune, but you must grant me some allowance for relief."

"I can't see that you have anything to be relieved about," I grumbled as he rested his hand against mine to steady it. His hand was warmer than the broth, and infinitely more comforting.

"Oh, but I do." For a moment I saw again that flare of uncertainty cross his features, but he hid it again quickly beneath the mask of lecturing logician. "You see, when you came home the other night, or to be precise, so very early the other morning, I indulged my curiosity, thinking that I might never have another opportunity to do so. I had convinced myself that it would not matter whether or not I destroyed your good opinion of me -- your tenure in these rooms was coming to an end in any case, and you would soon be back with the Army. It was not a rational conclusion."

"And you pride yourself on your ratiocination," I said. Proximity showed me the fine lines worn into Holmes' face and the shadows under his eyes, and I knew that he was all too likely correct in assigning his joy to relief, for I had seen men shed years at the relief of the siege of Candahar. There is a certain giddiness one reaches at the end of exhaustion, and that I could forgive, no matter how irritating it was to my disconsolation. Then, too, the gleam in his grey eyes was inviting me to enjoy the mantle of professorial expertise he had so blatantly adopted, and I could not help but respond to that cajolery.

"Under normal circumstances it is my most salient asset," he said dryly, steepling his forefingers and bringing them up to tap restlessly against his lips for a moment as he chose his next words. " But by giving in to impulse I committed myself to three presuppositions which I realized afterwards were groundless. The first lay in assuming that you would have no difficulty in returning to the Army. Obviously, that was an error. Although had you not fallen ill, I suspect that the theory might still hold some validity. I am not a military man, as you well know, and stories of officers who have gone on to greatness lacking an arm or a leg or an eye have led me to believe that the physical criteria must not be strictly enforced. But perhaps that has changed since Nelson's day?"

"Very likely," I said, equally dryly, and forbore to point out that Nelson had been a genius -- and a Navy man -- whereas I was neither. "What was your second supposition?"

"The second, fortunately, appears to be correct, although it could easily have been just as erroneous as the first. I was assuming that you would not disgusted by any indication of depravity on my part." I opened my mouth to protest, but he waved me silent. "No, it was an unwarranted assumption. I did not act without some previous consideration of the matter, of course. My initial observations had established that the risk of taking action was not unreasonably large. Despite your clear delight in the variations of the female form, I had seen several small indications that you were not unaware of the attractions of our own sex. Your background as a public schoolboy and a military man as well as a medical doctor led me to believe that you would be informed as to what those attractions might be in general. And your observations of my own person over the past several months lent some credence to the notion that you might not find me objectionable in the specific, although I discounted much of that last conclusion on the grounds that you had had few other subjects to study. But I could have mistaken your convalescent objection to rows for tolerance, and worse, the assumption carried a dangerous corollary, for you might have felt obligated to report me to the authorities. I have no doubt whatsoever that you would not hesitate to fulfill your responsibilities if you thought it necessary."

"It would hardly be necessary," I told him, torn between amusement at his pedantry and amazement that he had discerned so much about my more prurient interests despite my silence on the subject. "Had I raised any serious objection you would not have persisted."

"You made several objections to my presence while you were delirious," he said, suddenly somber. "Not by name, but you were quite vehement. Had you not been equally distressed by Dr. Fergusen and Mrs. Hudson I might have withdrawn entirely in favor of the nurse that Fergusen suggested, however exorbitant the fee. By staying I could hardly make things worse, however, and I felt a certain responsibility, since if I had brought you to your own bed instead of the settee, you might not have fallen on your shoulder."

"It wouldn't have been a simple matter to maneuver me up the stairs," I said. Regret was not an emotion I associated with Holmes, and I had no wish to see him fall back into a black mood. Not when he had been acting in my best interests! "The settee was the logical choice."

"It wasn't much simpler getting you to the settee," Holmes agreed. "I suppose I could have brought you to my own bed," he added, with a lightning smile. "But it was full of papers. I'd been sorting them while I was waiting. In any case, it became clear within the hour that you did not recognize your surroundings, much less me." He took the half-empty cup I had abandoned and set it aside. "Forgive me for mentioning it, but I cannot think that they treated you well at Peshawar."

"Most of them did," I sighed, and allowed Holmes to help me ease back into a more restful position on the bed. The nightmares had been the worst of the enteric fever, but I had no doubt that some of the memories I had of that unhappy period were genuine. Just thinking of them made me feel worse. "But a few of the European orderlies saw that I had been shot in the back during the worst rout in recent memory and drew the obvious conclusion."

"That you'd been surrounded by the enemy?" Holmes said, with a raised eyebrow.

"That I'm a coward." My despair began to reassert itself, for there was no denying that when the nightmares had me in their grip I felt utterly craven, but Holmes would have none of it.

"A coward would have walked _away_ from Gower street," he said vehemently, and then sat back and struck himself on the forehead with an open palm. "I forgot! Here!" He began to tug letters and telegrams out of various pockets, a few of them neatly folded, but more looking as if they'd been thrust away between moments of distraction. "These are for you. They've been coming by every post."

"What on earth?" I fumbled to catch the bits of paper. My correspondence consisted of invoices from my chemist and the bookseller, and rare messages from the Army, little more. But here were notes in a dozen hands. I unfolded one of the telegrams. "'Pleased to inform you that little Tommy is doing well'." I read. " 'Many thanks for your kindness. Harrison.' Who the devil is Harrison?"

"The father of one of your younger patients," Holmes deduced. "From the train, presumably, since the clientele from the clinic would not be likely to invest in a wire. Although I think that these two may be from some of your patients there." He held up two grubby envelopes of cheap paper, addressed in the block printing of the barely literate. "May I?"

"Please," I answered. Even the copperplate of the telegram had been an effort to read.

"'Dear Doctor Watson, they tell us you are sick of being at the trains when they crashed and will not come back soon so I am writing to say thank you for the orange and I am keeping my toe clean it is better now and it don't hurt as much but I want to show you again. Jim.' Another patient, and not one who has been initiated into the use of full stops." Holmes opened the next envelope and squinted at the note within. "More gratitude, I see, from a Mrs...Collins? Collier? Jenny has cut her tooth and the fever is gone, and if you need any mending done do not forget she will do it for you. I wonder what Jenny's father will make of that offer."

I remembered Jenny and her poor frantic mother, who had been discarded by an indigent family and was therefore cut off from the feminine advice which would have eased her concerns over the minor illnesses of her first child. The father was apprentice to a costermonger, orphaned in the more usual way, and equally uncertain about how well he was providing for the first addition to the family. When I closed my eyes I could see him again, turning his cap endlessly in his hands while I made my examination of their fine fat fussing baby. "He suggested the bargain. Doesn't like to be beholden to anyone."

"Maybe I should send her what remains of your suit, then," Holmes said. I heard the crinkle of another envelope. "This fellow was on the train, he says, and is wondering if you have any notion what became of his pocketbook. It no doubt vanished to the same place as yours did." More paper, rustling, "This is better. 'Dear Doctor, I wish to thank you for your prompt action in aiding my son at the Gower Street station accident. His injuries are still quite painful, but my own physician reassures us that he will make a complete recovery in time, and attributes that to you. Enclosed please find my cheque for services rendered." Holmes gave a low whistle. "I had no idea you were so expensive a practitioner, Watson."

That reminded me, unfortunately, of Preston's admonition. "I'm not a practitioner at all," I sulked. "Not now. Major Preston all but ordered me to give it up."

I felt the feathertouch of his fingertips at my hairline, soothing back a few strands that had gone astray. But by the time I opened my eyes he'd sat back again, and was collecting the stray missives into a neat pile. "I do hope it's only a temporary hiatus," he said, watching his own hands as they flattened telegrams and smoothed out creases. The acid stains of his experiments had faded somewhat and there were far fewer sticking plasters on those long hands than I had come to think of as normal, informing me of the degree to which he had sacrificed his researches to his black mood and my illness. "I've come to think that it might be convenient to have a resident physician about the place."

I knit my forehead, trying to think if I had noticed any symptoms in him which might require treatment. "Why is that?"

"I suffer from an occasional affliction," he said with a studied neutrality. "A swelling." For a moment the grey eyes flashed up to meet mine, but then they fell again and he went on. "Oh, it's a minor matter -- more a distraction than an impediment. I have an ointment which, in combination with vigorous massage, readily corrects the condition. But I conducted a few experiments while I was at University, and discovered that the remedy is far more efficacious when it is applied by hands other than my own."

A more diffident and offhand proposition I could not imagine, but the sincerity of it was made clear by the faint blush which was creeping up my fellow lodger's ears. For a long moment I watched that unlikely phenomenon, and the rataplan of rain against the panes was the only sound between us. Everything stilled, even Holmes's hands, as I sought words. I wanted, more than anything, to match his insouciance, to meet his lightheartedness with the delight and joy which it deserved. But I'm afraid my voice cracked when I said, "I should be grateful to think my anatomical studies might still be of some use."

Again his eyes met mine, and there was such desire in their dark depths as made my heart stutter within my chest. "I have every confidence in your skills, Doctor," he growled, as if forbidding me to demur. For a moment his cool right hand encircled mine, and then he frowned and reached up to test my cheek and forehead. "You're getting warm," he said, passion replaced immediately with concern.

"Not just from fever, I assure you!" I ejaculated and caught at his sleeve as he started to rise, meaning to tell him that I wanted him just as much as he appeared to want me. "Holmes -- " But I could not bring myself to be blunt, not even after so unmistakable a declaration of intentions as we had just made. "I'll be all right," I finished lamely.

Holmes smiled. "I have every confidence in that, too." But he did not come back to the bed. Instead he busied himself with preparing a dilution of phosphoric acid according to the prescription Preston had left behind, and when I had managed that draught, offered me a dose of Fergusen's laudanum to follow it. "I know you don't like it, but it should be easier on your stomach than the salicylic acid. I'll undertake to waken you if you seem to be dreaming badly, and I doubt you'll sleep without something to ease that shoulder."

"I'm used to the shoulder," I told him. "And you need sleep as much as I do. Especially if you're going to be saddled with me for another year." But I took the laudanum anyway, because it would be too much work to argue further, and sleep would make the long hours of being bedridden again pass faster than staring at the ceiling. I told Holmes that, and he chuckled as he settled the pillows and sheets around me.

"Indolence suits you no better than it does me," he observed. "Although I doubt you'll be bedridden for long. Very well, we'll think of a nice quiet occupation to fill your hours. How about indexing medical works for the _Lancet_? Their pleas for someone to do the job are beginning to look quite plaintive, and as they must supply the monographs it would enable you to keep up with your profession at little or no cost."

I'd seen the advertisement, printed on the back of each issue of the magazine for the past several months; although the nominal pay attached to the tedious task was inadequate, Holmes had a point about the expense that would be saved if I did not have to purchase medical monographs out of my own pocket. And it would be useful work, as I well knew. _Necessary_ work. With so many discoveries and theories being published in the medical field it was impossible for even a conscientious man to keep entirely up to date on every advance. Sometimes there would need to be research done, and good indexes would facilitate that.** "I can try it, certainly," I said, for the elegance of Holmes's suggestion appealed to me. "It's not as if there's much else I can do while I'm in bed."

"I can think of several things," Holmes muttered. "But they'll have to wait until you aren't contagious."

That surprised a bark of laughter from me. And then I think I must have let the laudanum take mastery of my tongue for when Holmes's reddened I informed him that I would be able to do a great deal more once I was capable of rising. It was just the sort of thing that Daniel would have said to me, and I would swear that I heard the echo of his laughter as well as Holmes's and my own. If it was a fever-born hallucination it was kinder than the rest, for it came with the certainty that Daniel would approve of my sharing the jokes and adolescent witticisms we had devised with this new friend. When I had breath enough again, I embarked upon an even more regrettable pun, and watched with sleepy satisfaction as Holmes collapsed onto the window ledge whilst attempting to regain his composure. When he forgot his pretensions like this he seemed much younger, but how differently I looked upon that youth now than I had not fifteen minutes before. With his hair falling over his forehead and a lingering smile upon his face he looked very much the boy and not the self-possessed man I had begun to know.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed, when he had calmed himself. "You do have hidden depths, don't you, Doctor?"

Daniel's memory whispered to me that I'd no doubt enjoy having Holmes plumb them, but that was a length to which I had ventured but twice, and never sober, and I did not share the insight with my fellow lodger. I was chary of introducing notions which would daunt either of us; there would be time and enough to discover the extent of his experience and desires. At the moment I could safely hope that Holmes would attribute the flush on my face to the fever. Besides, I was growing somnolent. I thanked him, instead, and asked if he might help me take another drink of water.

He did so with alacrity, spurning the invalid cup which would have allowed me to remain prone in favor of sitting on the bed to prop me up against his chest as I sipped from the glass. Now I could be sure that the memory of him doing much the same thing in the bath was a true one. Now I could enjoy his wiry strength and shift a little to keep our bones from banging uncomfortably. I could even savor that mild discomfort since it proved I was not creating a fantasy entire from heat and air and loneliness. I felt him yawn.

"You should sleep," I told him. "And so should I."

"We should. And separately too, worse luck. I don't want to give Dr. Fergusen a second patient." But his hands were reluctant to give me up. Even once I was settled again he stayed beside me, soothing the creases from the sheet and my nightshirt and refreshing the fever rag he laid upon my brow. I wanted to watch his face, but I could not keep my eyes open.

"Holmes," I said, for I would not have him leave until I was truly asleep. "You said there were three presuppositions. But you've only told me about two of them. What was the third?"  
"Do you really want to know?" he asked, softly.

"Yes."

"The third was the most unforgivable of the three," he warned me, gently, as he used his handkerchief to divert the trickle of water from the fever rag that would otherwise have run into my ear. "In the first instance, I mistook the Army. In the second I might have mistaken you. But in this last case, I made a far more elementary error. You recall that I said that I thought it would not matter if I lost your good opinion, yes?"

I murmured my assent.

His voice was growing even quieter, but his hand was resting against my arm, his fingertips at the pulsepoint in my wrist. "Barring the unlikelihood of public condemnation -- which I never truly believed in, despite the vituperation you were pouring on my head while you were out of your own -- the loss of your good opinion would only matter if it mattered to _me._ And that's where I miscalculated."

I could feel my respiration slowing, knew distantly that by all appearances I must be thought to have already slipped into slumber. But Holmes lingered. "There are some benefits to making errors, you know. Having done so once serves as an inoculation against the future. And I really cannot expect to deduce the motivations of others if I fail to properly measure myself." He must have been thinking aloud by then, speaking to himself, for it was beyond my power to respond. For all I know I may have dreamt his last words, or the comfort of being tucked in like a small child.

"So I must thank you, my dear Watson, for upending all my notions. I can no longer take it as axiomatic that when it comes to the opinions of my fellow man -- or at least the opinions of my fellow lodger -- I do not care. Clearly," he said, from somewhere beyond my reach, "I do."

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*This narrative seems to indicate that Watson was wounded on two separate occasions in Afghanistan, once soon after his arrival during the skirmish at Khusk-i-Nakud and again more severely at Maiwand.  
**Watson's familiarity with Percy Trevelyan's monograph on obscure nervous lesions may have sprung from his work for the Lancet.


	3. Service

Written for the prompt:_ Moriarty/Moran: master and servant - The second most dangerous man in London._

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The Army teaches a man how to take orders, even when the man giving them is an idiot, but that was never true of _him_. He was clever and had better than threats to keep our loyalty. Compliance he rewarded handsomely, and I alone reaped the greatest rewards for obedience.

And the greatest punishment for defiance.

For I followed him to Meirengen against orders, and so had to hide my movements, which made me late to the Falls. Too late to prevent catastrophe, I raised my gun to take revenge, and could not believe it when tears blurred my aim.


	4. Light in Dark Places

Written for the prompt:_ Holmes/Hopkins/Watson: bit of bondage - Hopkins makes himself all too available to Holmes while investigating a smugglers cave. Watson decides to make an example._

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"That's torn it, Mr. Holmes," Stanley Hopkins said, looking at the water rising in the passage to the sea with dismay. "It'll be hours before we can get out or anyone else can get in."

"No matter," replied the detective, leading the way back up to the cavern's largest chamber, where Dr. Watson was still studying the inventory of smuggled wines. "Our reluctant hosts have provided us with all the comforts of bed and supper table. We're certain to find a way to pass the time."

Hopkins licked his lips, wishing that the tide had blocked them off from the doctor too. "We could go explore that back passage," he offered, and then blushed when Watson guffawed.

"Later, perhaps," Holmes said, casting a fond look upon his fellow-lodger. "Watson, have you been counting those bottles or investigating their contents?"

"Both," Watson admitted with an unrepentant grin. "There's a very nice claret here."

Hopkins blinked. "But that's evidence! You're drinking the evidence?"

"And eating it too," Watson said, holding up a plate with a round of cheese that had already been broached. "This is a Fougerus – a kind of Brie, you know, quite tasty. And the bread may be from yesterday, but it's still acceptable."

"Excellent." Holmes settled himself on the bedstead beside the doctor and tore a chunk of bread from the loaf that sat on the barrel which had served the smugglers as a table.

"I thought you said that eating during a case diverts blood from the brain?" Hopkins asked weakly as his preceptor made inroads into the soft cheese with a pocket-knife.

"It does!" Holmes asserted, around a sizeable mouthful. "But there's nothing left to be solved here."

"And with Trewith and Poldark already in jail there's no worrying about the villains getting away scot-free," Watson added, passing the open bottle to Holmes, who drank straight from the neck in a fashion that made the young inspector's heart beat a good deal faster. "Sit down, man, you're giving me a crick in the neck, and put something in your mouth."

Hopkins suspected that the doctor had phrased himself in that fashion deliberately, but he sat anyway, and accepted the bottle that Holmes was passing his way. With any luck, he could blame his blushes on the claret and the candlelight.

* * *

Some time – and several bottles – later, Stanley Hopkins was certain that he was either in heaven or someplace quite the opposite direction. The conversation had been most stimulating – particularly Holmes' demonstration of the baritsu moves which had saved his life at Reichenbach Falls upon Hopkins' own person – a demonstration that had required the removal of coats, waistcoats and neckties on the part of both participants.

But after that the doctor had somehow mentioned salacious literature, and it had become rapidly apparent to Hopkins that a youthful perusal of his older brother's copies of "The Pearl" and a furtive sally at arms with one of the more discreet denizens of the East End had been insufficient tuition. Compared to the older men Stanley knew that he had been left with some definite deficiencies in that particular area of expertise. He'd never read Catullus, for one (a matter he meant to correct as soon as the tide turned) and he didn't even know all of the limericks!

Now he was grateful, if bemused, because the topic had turned yet again, this time to the new model darbies that had been issued to Scotland Yard not three weeks before. There was some hope that the raging stiff'un he was trying to conceal by keeping his plate in his lap would ease before he had to move.

"They're in my coat pocket," he offered, when Holmes said he'd like to see an example.

"Excellent," Holmes said, turning his head on its pale pillar of neck with the lazy grace of a swan. "Watson, my dear fellow, would you mind?"

"Not in the least," the doctor said, rising and going back behind the bed to rummage through the discarded coats. In his absence the bed sagged differently, and Hopkins tried not to gloat obviously over the warmth of having Sherlock Holmes' arm resting against his own.

Holmes turned to look at him – they were nearly nose to nose – and Stanley swallowed hard. "D-did you..." he stammered. "Didn't you... I mean, hasn't anyone showed you...?"

"Not yet," Holmes said, quite calmly, as he lay a hand against the side of Hopkins' face and leaned a little closer.

Stanley had to put one hand back to keep from falling over, but he let his lips part and closed his eyes, waiting for whatever was going to happen to happen.

Except that what happened was the sudden feel of metal around his wrist and the double click of the cuffs as his arm was suddenly fastened to the rail at the end of the bed.

"Tsk, tsk," the doctor's voice came from behind. "You should never let yourself get distracted like that, Inspector."

Holmes' warmth and weight vanished and Stanley opened his eyes and made a half-hearted swing, but all that happened was that his free wrist was taken in a grip like iron.

"The new cuffs work quite nicely," Holmes observed, as he forced Stanley's hand back behind. "But the old ones are still very useful."

"It will be interesting to see which set works best," Watson said, as he took over the wrist and fastened it as well to the iron frame of the bed.

Stanley didn't know what to say, or whether to protest. Holmes was standing over him, and it was entirely obvious to eye and nose that the great detective was also harboring an erection.

"What do you mean to do?" he asked.

"Improve your education," he was told, and he couldn't help but feel a shiver of delight. He closed his eyes again as two sets of hands began to undo his collar and the buttons of his shirt. Really, he had to admit, the feel of a mustache at the back of one's neck was quite... enlightening...

"Oh, yes, please," he whispered, earning a kiss upon his forehead.

"I thought as much."

Stanley could only moan agreement. The way he was sitting put him between Holmes and the doctor, and somehow they were both pressing against him, one in front and one in back, so that he could feel their heat and smell their sweat and musk as they dealt with each other's clothing around him.

He dared to lean forward a little and kiss Holmes' chest, to try to touch his tongue against the dark aureole of nipple, but Holmes pulled away.

"Not yet, my fine young protégé," he laughed, and to Stanley's intense disappointment he and the doctor both got up and moved away from the bed.

"But I'm over here!" Stanley protested, as the two of them resumed their caresses without him.

"We know you are," Watson sighed happily, leaning heavily against the barrel as Holmes worked his way downwards.

The detective paused in his ministrations to fold his coat and place it on the floor before going to his knees in front of the doctor, and before he returned to his efforts he cast one last glance at the youngster straining his arms against the handcuffs.

"If you wish to emulate my methods, Inspector," he said didactically, "you must first learn to _observe_."


	5. 1885

To say that Holmes and I were lovers during the early years of our acquaintance would be to grossly misrepresent the facts. To say that we occasionally found it convenient to relieve each other of the distracting pressures to which any healthy young male animal is subject (as Holmes did) is much nearer the case. I attached little more importance to the practice than he did, and he attached none at all. And yet, when the laws changed and Holmes turned to the legal pleasures of cocaine for solace, I often found myself watching his long, elegant hands and _remembering_.

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Author's note: 1885 was the year in which Parliament passed the Labouchere amendment, which lessened the penalty for homosexual activities in England, but in language so vague that it broadened the definition of what constituted those activities from actual sodomy to any kind of contact. It quickly became the blackmailer's best friend.


	6. In the Dark

It wasn't until after midnight that I dared venture deeper into the damp cellar where Holmes had been imprisoned, leaving the lantern behind me. He was calmer, or more exhausted, by then, and had grown accustomed enough to dim light to keep his eyes open for minutes at a time. They glittered at me as I crept closer, inch by careful inch, waiting again and again for the tension to leave his shoulders.

I talked softly the whole time, although I can not vouch for what I said. Lestrade swears I was reduced to nursery rhymes by three in the morning, when at long last Holmes allowed me to settle beside him and gather his cold, half-starved body to my own. For a moment he stiffened, and I held my breath, wondering if he would take another fit, but instead he rested his head against my chest, as if listening for my heart. "Watson," he whispered, and I felt the fear running out of him, felt the sleep he so needed overwhelm his last defenses. I kissed the top of his head, too glad to hear his voice to think twice about the gesture.

"Yes, Holmes," I said. "I'm here."

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inspired by a picture by Delirium


	7. Per Suit

The new Sherlock Holmes trailer has inspired some truly cracky fics, to which I now add my mite, inspired by janeturenne and Jude Law in that uniform.

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**Per Suit**

The brown suit disappears out of the wardrobe on Tuesday, and when it turns up again, it is ensconced in Mrs. Hudson's mending basket where it will stay until she can find matches for the one remaining button.

The tweed he wears only in the country, so Holmes cannot understand why he might object to its being put to use for a disguise on Wednesday -- and Holmes's 'Scottish' accent is so outrageous that he cannot do much more than laugh in any case, despite the unexpected dunk in the Thames that sends both the tweed and his favorite blue suit down to await Monday and the laundry tub.

The white linen suit is hardly appropriate for the time of the year, and chances are on Thursday he wouldn't have noticed its absence if it weren't that the wardrobe has become distinctly less crowded. He doesn't know when it was borrowed, and while he cares, he can't very well raise a fuss with a client waiting in the sitting room and train tickets burning a hole in his tan suit pocket.

"Perhaps if I soak it in lemon water," Mrs. Hudson says mournfully of the tan suit Friday evening, when they crawl back in looking the worse for wear. It is some consolation that Holmes's suit has an even more outrageous pattern of stains of dubious origin. But only some.

The gray morning coat disappears that night. With the matching trousers.

Saturday morning finds John H. Watson fresh from his ablutions, standing in front of his mysteriously depleted wardrobe barefooted and bareheaded, with the mouse-colored dressing gown (which is too small for him but was the only one hanging in the bathroom) wrapped around his sodden form, wondering why the hell Sherlock Holmes has 'borrowed' his second to last clean shirt.

"I needed something respectable to wear," Holmes says, when asked, reaching past Watson for the formal black tailcoat and matching trousers hanging there. "Mycroft wants us both at the Diogenes for luncheon and from there we're to go on to discuss a matter with the Prime Minister."

"What happened to your ...." Watson begins, and then says, "oh," and blushes, because he knows perfectly well what happened to Holmes's formal outfit. "You'd think Mrs. Hudson would have mended those tears by now," he mutters.

"It isn't so much the mending," Holmes says with a sudden reminiscent smile. "But Mrs. Hudson is having considerable difficulty with the grass stains."

"Who'd know they'd show on black?" Watson defends himself. "And you're the one who thought under those rose bushes would be a good place to..."

"Speaking of Mrs. Hudson," Holmes interrupts quickly. "I hear her coming with our breakfast. You'd best get dressed, old fellow."

"In what? The only thing you've left me are knee britches and my formal uniform. Your brother isn't going to want to go fishing or golfing, and I can hardly parade around London in uniform."

"Oh, I don't think London will mind," Holmes says cheerfully, and heads out to the sitting room.

"I don't even know if I can still wear it after all this time!" Watson shouts after him, but there's no hope for it. He dresses quickly and follows his fellow-lodger, only to find himself pinned under the twin gazes of Holmes and Mrs. Hudson. "What?" he says, adjusting the black sleeves and looking himself over for torn barding or bits of fluff. "Doesn't it fit right?"

"Oh, yes..." Holmes says, his eyes dark with appreciation.

Mrs. Hudson sighs blissfully. "I do love a man in uniform."

Watson, appeased, and pinking up a bit at the praise, says gruffly, "Just as well. If it weren't for those knee britches and this uniform I'd have to spend tomorrow and the next day naked while I wait for the laundry to be done."

While he settles down to his kippers and eggs, Holmes escorts Mrs. Hudson over to the door. "Try not to do anything too desperate to that uniform," she whispers to the detective. "I've enough laundry conundrums for one week, and if you ruin it we'll never get him into it again."

"I'll take very good care of the uniform, whether he's in it or not," Holmes promises, drawing a fiver out of his pocket and tucking it into hers. "You just dispose of those knee britches. Today!"


	8. Partners

"I don't need to rest, Watson," Holmes insisted, his voice cracking with exhaustion. "I need to go through this volume again and discover what we've missed."

I plucked the book from his hand. "I'll read it to you," I said and raised a hand to forestall further argument. "And if you'll consent to playing backstop for me you can see the pages over my shoulder and we'll both be warmer."

"Very well," he said, and opened his arms.

It was not long before I felt his chin come to rest atop my head. I read on, silently, and let him sleep.

* * *

based on a picture by spacefall


	9. Train Ride to London

A sidelight to "Sink the _Friesland_".

* * *

We might have shared space with Sherlock Holmes and the Doctor, I suppose, but I can't say as I regret commandeering a different compartment down the train and ordering young Hopkins to take off his shoes and stretch out for a nap. Three times into the water he'd gone the night before, and he was tired enough to obey, but he hesitated and then chose the seat beside me and not the seat across. "Comforting is better than comfortable," he muttered, and all the way to London I sat with his head in my lap and his heart beneath my hand.


	10. Obsessions Can Be Useful

There was only one man who had known my full plans, only one who could have exposed me so thoroughly to Moriarty's machinations. My mind rebelled against the possibility at first, but as I sat wrapped in a plaid blanket, smoking the wretched cigars that were all the shepherd who had pulled me from the river could provide, I called to mind every encounter I had had with my brother in the past several years, and realized that his fascination with Watson was deeper than I had supposed. That explained everything.

He never could stand me having my own toys.


	11. Solace

After Mary died I went to Pondicherry Lodge and took what Thaddeus Sholto had been offering me for the past three years. I had promised her not to seek a better oblivion and it was easier amid the smells and sounds of India to let my grief be drowned in the heat that had been denied all the long months of her illness.

Thaddeus understood that, and did not mention that the name I cried out as I came to my completion was neither his, nor hers, but held me until I fell asleep at last and dreamt of waterfalls.


	12. Scrap from the Screenplay

...and as the giant metal death yoyo unspooled its way disastrously through the half built ship Watson realized that Holmes was caught in the metal plating below. The detective was clearly too dazed to do more than stare at his oncoming doom, so the doctor ran toward him, leaping like a tightly trousered gazelle and sliding into a desperate cuddle which drew the detective's head below the danger zone just in time.

The clang of steel and the rush of air over their heads said the danger was over, and yet a better danger had formed. As their lips met...


	13. Sussex Morning

I do not count them lost, the years when reticence and law and misunderstandings served as barriers to any chance of nights spent warm and languid in your arms. There are more kinds of love than this, and those we have shared always, despite wives and waterfalls and sojourns abroad in the service of our country. Two years apart, or three, or four, and still we end each other's sentences and know when to pass the wine without being asked. Yet I would count the years lost were we to part again, now we have come together.

Please, John. Stay.


	14. Negotiating

"It has been two _years_," Watson said, turning the wineglass endlessly in his hands, his face empty of hope. "If it were possible for me to give Mary a child, I think we would both know by now."

"And is a child so important?" Holmes asked her, though he knew from her pallor that it was, to her. Elsewise he would never have found himself sitting in their darkened parlor, long past the hour when most of London had crawled into bed for the night. Would never have found himself keeping Watson's revolver in his own pocket for safekeeping, or wondering how to prevent a man with a thousand poisons at his command from spilling just a few grams too many of this or that into his morning coffee.

"I love John," Mary said simply. "But I will need a child to love when he is gone."

And Holmes saw the truth in that, because if there was one thing he respected Mary Morstan Watson for it was her honesty. She had never once tried to prevent her husband from taking his place by Holmes's side when danger threatened. Had never once pretended that she did not know that to forbid John Watson danger was to kill him slowly. Had never once attempted to transform her husband into a tin statue labelled with the epithet "respectable".

But she had expected certain compensations in return. His name. His companionship. His child.

"I don't suppose you'd care to adopt one of my Irregulars," Holmes said, although he instantly apologized for it. "No, no, my dear. I can see that you want a babe of your own. But does it have to be Watson's?"

"You want me to cuckold my husband?" she asked, bright with terror that he had deduced her one thin thread of possibility.

"Not exactly." Holmes turned to Watson. "You cannot be a cuckold if you are there, and part of the act. And I would be very, _very_ careful of your wife."

Watson only stared at his glass. "Do you understand what you're offering?" he asked at last.

"If it keeps you from chucking yourself into the Thames again, I would count the effort well worth it." Holmes fiddled with his pipe, wishing he could light it. Tobacco would be very soothing right about now. They would take some convincing, he knew, but he could already see them both considering the proposition. By morning he'd have talked them into it, no matter how much the prospect of sex with his best friend's wife gave _him_ qualms. "It is, perhaps, not my forte, but I believe a microscopic examination of my semen would confirm my virility. And considering the hazards of detection which you've faced with me, it would be only fitting that I face the hazards of married life with you."

"Hazards of married life?" Mary exclaimed, and a small glimmer of himself came back to Watson's eyes.

"It could be worse, I suppose," he said, looking at Holmes directly for the first time in hours. "It could be lace doilies."


	15. STUD

**STUD**

_With grovelling apologies to ACD, beta thanks to Janeturenne, and also thanks to the Holmestice challenge on LJ. I wrote this for havlockvetinari during the June 2011 round of gifts._

* * *

_,_

* * *

_There was a time, God help me, when Tobias Gregson and G Lestrade of Scotland Yard, would spend hours vying for my attention, spreading their tailfeathers before me like a pair of petulant peacocks. Back then I thought they were merely trying to impress upon me their lack of need for an amateur consultant (no matter how desperate their pleas for my intervention.) But it was pointed out to me - by Watson, who is cleverer than he lets on - that my intervention was, in those early days, frequently unnecessary. Gregson would waste his shillings to get confirmation of a theory he'd already outlined, and Lestrade was coming to Baker Street to boast as often as he was coming to employ my services. That all changed, of course, shortly after the Brixton Road affair. But Watson saw enough of them then to understand the situation, and had his own reasons for correctly ascribing the genuine motivations which brought both Inspectors to my door. Not that he said anything to me, of course, not then..._

* * *

My constitution was still frailer than I liked that first spring in Baker Street, enough so that many of the activities of life remained to me only as wistful memories. Long walks in the park, horseback riding, swimming; these pleasures, and many more among the simple joys of a healthy body, were beyond me. By March, however, I had regained enough strength to take at least an academic interest in certain forms of exercise, and it was from that comfortably remote plane that I watched as Inspector Gregson and Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard competed for the attention of both their superiors and Mister Sherlock Holmes.

I could hardly blame them. Holmes was, and is, a striking man, and in those early days, when the resilience of youth countered the effects of tobacco, cocaine, and self-neglect, there were moments at which he could be said to be quite beautiful - particularly at those times there when enthusiasm or triumph flushed his thin, pale face with color and filled his grey eyes with light. I had noted it the moment we met, when he was all aglow over his chemical discoveries, although my need for cheaper quarters had translated the observation into simple relief that my potential fellow lodger would not be a trial to look upon.

Naturally, I was not the only one looking.

In my account of "A Study in Scarlet" I have recorded how Holmes flung himself into his investigations of the corpse, but, in deference to convention, I omitted how avidly he was observed in turn by the two official detectives upon the scene. As my fellow lodger bent down to the body, and certain portions of his anatomy gained prominence, a wash of pink rose over Gregson's features and Lestrade's tongue darted out for a moment to wet his lips. I, of course, having been graced by Nature with an appreciation of the human form in all its infinite variety, had had better opportunities to study the line of Holmes's trousers given our shared quarters. I preferred the view unobstructed by coattails, else I might have been watching Holmes instead of the Scotland Yard men myself. But I was curious as to what the two professionals - who clearly had their own skills and theories, and who also clearly shared a certain amount of disdain for the youngster they had called in, for all that they called him "sir" - saw in Sherlock Holmes. Now I knew.

I took some amusement from my observation, but I was unprepared for the wave of jealousy which roiled my gut when Holmes praised Lestrade for his discovery of the word "Rache" written upon the wall. It was at that moment that I realized that I was as mesmerised by Sherlock Holmes as either of the two detectives, and my first consolation was that Holmes was so absorbed in the mystery before him that he seemed utterly oblivious to the ulterior fascinations of his audience. Had he known, I do not think he would have burst the soap bubble of Lestrade's pride so quickly. Nor, do I think, would he have granted the three of us a twenty minute encore performance of his earlier contortions as he examined the murder room in obsessive detail. Gregson and Lestrade might have been used to this performance, but they watched in appreciative silence as my friend flung himself from one corner to the other and even lay down on the floor to investigate a point of interest with his glass.

My second consolation came in the cab, after Holmes had delivered his description of the murdere to the two disbelieving professionals. Whilst we were on our way to visit the constable who had discovered the body, Holmes praised my summary of the difficulties in the case. Gratified beyond good sense, I found myself puffing up quite as much as Lestrade had done, and in a manner in which I had not been capable since the fateful battle of Maiwand. I spent the interview with John Rance in nearly as much discomfort as that unhappy policeman (although for a different cause), and was quick to excuse myself from accompanying Holmes for the rest of the day. I needed the privacy of our rooms. Once there, I dealt with the consequences of my realisations and then settled myself down to plan. Whilst neither Lestrade nor Gregson appeared to be having any success in their race to attract the notice of Sherlock Holmes, I did not doubt that it was a race worth entering. Besides, I thought to myself as I dropped into sleep, I had the inside track, and I meant to keep it.

* * *

Of course I remember that first time - clear as daylight. It wasn't as if Sherlock Holmes was in the habit of turning up at crime scenes with another man in tow. For that matter, back then I'd have given no better than even odds whether Sherlock Holmes would turn up at all, no matter how nicely he'd been asked. I was so relieved to see him coming up the path at Lauriston Gardens that I didn't think to object to having another civilian poking his nose into my murder investigation. Not that Holmes's companion carried himself like a civilian. Back like a ramrod, head held at regulation height - he'd been marched about, no question, though not for so many years he'd forgotten what his pockets were for. Too thin for his clothes, I remember thinking, as though he'd been ill. Still, this new chap didn't turn green at the sight of the body, which is more than could be said for most constables when they're new to the force, and he didn't get in the way of the investigation. And I had other things to think about just then, with Sherlock Holmes flitting about in search of clues and pontificating at the lot of us.

It wasn't until Holmes had swanned off with his unexpected friend at his heels that I even found out the fellow's name. It turned out that Lestrade had met the man already. "Watson," he told me with the smugness of superior knowledge. "First name John. Medical doctor on convalescent leave after Maiwand. He's been sharing lodgings with Sherlock Holmes ever since he made the move to Baker Street."

"Sharing lodgings?" I echoed, though it made me sound a right idiot. I'd have done better to latch onto that mention of Maiwand. But I couldn't help but wonder if the stranger had been sharing anything else with Sherlock Holmes, no matter how much I meant to keep that thought under my hat. I covered my gaffe as best I could. "I'm surprised to hear it. If those Baker Street rooms are anything like as full of papers as that wretched hovel Holmes rented on Montague Street it's a wonder an Army man would consent to stay."

"Mr. Holmes is a reformed character, apparently," Lestrade assured me grandly, rocking back and forth on his heels as he scored his points. "I paid him more than one call over that forgery business, and if he's been accumulating newsprint, he's kept the bulk of it out of the sitting room. For now." My infuriating colleague wrapped up the wedding ring he'd been quick to snatch up before anyone else had a chance into his handkerchief and put it into his pocket. "Mind you, I don't think it's out of affection. Those Baker Street rooms are a mark above what Sherlock Holmes could afford on his own. Unless you've been paying him more than I have for his services?"

That was a dig I would have done best to ignore, but I couldn't help but growl, "I solve my cases with my head, not my pocketbook," at Lestrade as I made for the door. I was _not_going to ask Lestrade what services he had purchased from Mr. Sherlock Holmes. It was torment enough to find myself imagining Holmes willing to accept payment for the services I most wanted him to render.

I decided then and there that I would have to see Holmes's new lodgings for myself and take the opportunity to observe this Doctor Watson more closely. Luckily, Holmes, in his fascination with the American connection, had failed to note that Drebber had been in London long enough to purchase a hat. With any luck, the hatter would know just where that hat had been delivered. An investigation into the murdered man's most recent accommodations and acquaintances was sure to yield a goodly crop of clues.

Enough, I was certain, to impress even Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

Anyone with two eyes in his head could see that Sherlock Holmes and Tobias Gregson made a pretty pair. Tall and pale and clever, both of them, though the one was fair and the other dark. Day and night, I'd think to myself, whenever I saw them together, straw and raven locks near touching over some clew. Many's the time I've caught myself looking at the two of them and calculating how little distance stood between and whether or not I'd fit. And then I'd give myself a shake and look harder, for any sign at all that their proximity wasn't due just to the fact that Gregson was trying to get closer to our favorite amateur. Because if any one man was going to get close to Sherlock Holmes, I intended for it to be me.

Of course, that was before Dr. Watson came along.

Honest truth, my first hope when I met the doctor wasn't all that far from Gregson's first reaction - that Sherlock Holmes had taken on a fellow lodger for the sake of having his conveniences convenient, as it were - because a man has a better chance of warming himself when the fellow he's after isn't an icicle. But during my visits Baker Street I hadn't seen any sign that he and the doctor shared anything more than a teapot. Buttons always done clear up to the neck, both of them, no matter what hour of the day, and the jumbleshop furniture never pushed askew. No lingering glances, neither, at least none I ever saw except once from the Doctor, and that was curiosity, not lust, or I'm a Dutchman. Mr. Holmes always shooed the man out of the room whenever I'd come to call, and Dr. Watson, he always went without argument. Just that one look, once, towards the end of February, and I promise you that Mr. Holmes didn't look back. I was as surprised as Gregson when they turned up as a pair at Lauriston Gardens come March. But the doctor, he effaced himself so thoroughly that I soon stopped considering him. Sherlock Holmes was there, after all, and shining the way he does when he's being clever, and who notices a candle when the sun is in the room?

I was right pleased when I came across that writing on the wall, and a nice bit of praise I got from Mr. Holmes for it, before he waved his better education under my nose. Not that Gregson had any German either. He does like a soliloquy, does Sherlock Holmes, and he's got the voice to deliver one, and while his parting shot did save a good bit of time in not hunting for a lady named Rachel, how he thought we'd have any more luck in hunting out the precise tall man with a florid face and long fingernails who had done the murder in all of London I don't know.

Mind you, if he would have happened to _mention_that his tall, redfaced man was a cabman, that would have narrowed the search a good bit. But that isn't like Sherlock Holmes and never has been. Likes his secrets, he does. Which, as you may expect, was no great grief to me, seeing as how I was still hoping that there was one secret he might have a mind to let me in on. But even then I knew that the best way to pry a piece of thinking from between Mr. Holmes's teeth was to give him a bit of something new to chew. I made up my mind to track down Stangerson, seeing as most men aren't murdered by strangers. If he was our murderer, all very fine and well, and if he wasn't, well, then he'd no doubt have a better chance of naming Drebber's enemies than any other man in England.

Still, as I said, I've eyes in my head, and I saw the way that Mr. Holmes reached out to take Dr. Watson's elbow and steady him as they reached the kerb, and it near took my breath away. A dead man, and a mystery, and Sherlock Holmes still had a thought to spare for the doctor? He didn't let go, neither, and they walked off arm in arm.

* * *

_Having Watson accompany me on a case was refreshing in a way I had not anticipated. Unlike the officials of Scotland Yard, his appreciation of my efforts was untainted by that faint air of amused tolerance which colored my conversations with Gregson or Lestrade. I was disappointed by his inability to go to the concert with me, but as his health had been improving steadily throughout our acquaintance, I saw no reason why his stamina might not someday soon withstand more sustained efforts. But I did feel a shade of trepidation when I returned home and noted the spots of feverish color still high over his cheekbones. There was no denying that my peculiar profession was likely to attract increasingly odd visitors to our shared rooms as the weather improved, and if this first venture were to prove too much for his health I would shortly find myself in need of a different fellow lodger._

But although Watson admitted that the murder scene had soured his dreams, he brightened when he discovered that I had made use of his name in the advertisement I had set to lure a murderer to our door. Indeed, he was all attention, and set about preparing his revolver in case of need with such an air of satisfaction that I felt my qualms fade away. Something of my concern remained however - a vague sense that I had gained more than I had suspected that day in the chemical laboratory at Bart's, or had risked more than I knew.

I daren't risk my fellow lodger's health again that day, and did no more than bid him wait up for me when I set out after the "old woman" who came in answer to my advertisement. He did, too, and despite my failure to bring my quarry to heel, I felt quite triumphant as I recounted the chase to the doctor. He patted my shoulder in consolation when I sent him off to bed, and wished me better luck next morning.

I sat up late, coaxing gypsy ballads out of my violin and ruminating on the mysteries of human touch.

Military life, even of a medical sort, does teach a man patience and the need for planning when undertaking a long campaign. And mine would be a long campaign, I knew, even then, for Sherlock Holmes had taken to a pinnacle the dubious art of ignoring anything which did not pertain to his interests. There was a very good chance that the man, despite his age, was something of an innocent. I had observed the phenomenon before, particularly in the case of an otherwise brilliant schoolmate who had been genuinely bewildered at being punished for absentmindedly easing an erection in the library whilst studying for an examination during our senior year. "But it was distracting me, John. Worse than a fleabite," he'd protested later, when I was providing him with salve for his wounded pride. "All I was doing was making it go away."

The memory of Tom's blushes when I explained, in far blunter terms than our pious housemaster had done, just why his actions were considered more heinous than scratching a fleabite, brightened my ablutions the next morning. He'd had far more occasions to blush that year, for he set about correcting his lack of knowledge with the diligence of a true scholar. Indeed, his enthusiasm for the subject had left me fond memories of the school gymnasium, the library, the pantry, and even the choir loft. I had little doubt that Sherlock Holmes, properly reminded of the necessary concepts, would be even more creative.

But that would have to wait until I had a better reason for breakfasting at noon than recurrent insomnia.

My fellow lodger, not too surprisingly given the violin concert he had treated the house to until all hours, was also late to the table, although he had been up long enough to go down to the corner and collect copies of all the morning editions for us to read over our sausages and eggs. He'd recruited a passel of street urchins at some point as well, and they came rattling up our stairs as we were lingering over our coffee. No sooner had they been dismissed to their mysterious work than Holmes spotted Inspector Gregson coming up the street.

Holmes, of course, ascribed Gregson's high good humor to the Inspector's efforts on the case. I agreed, but thought my own conclusions about where Gregson's interests lay was supported by the fresh polish on his boots and the thoroughness of his toilette. A man does not take the time to hunt down and purchase a boutonniere in early March when he is going to visit a rival! I had to admire Gregson's persistence, though, particularly once Holmes's fear that Gregson had pipped him was assuaged. If all of the man's advances towards my fellow lodger had met with such amused disdain it was a wonder that he was still trying.

* * *

A busy afternoon and evening, and a busy morning too, and it wasn't until noon next day that I had a chance to go to Baker Street and pay a visit on Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I thought I had the case wrapped up, although it proved I'd been a bit hasty. That's neither here nor there, though, since the main reason I'd gone to visit was to see what I could see.

Lestrade was right. Baker Street was a good long step up from Montague Street, for all that it was a long hike from the Museum and Bart's, where I knew Holmes spent most of his free time. There hadn't been a maid to answer the front door, before, nor a landlady willing to enquire if a visitor might like a fresh pot of tea brought upstairs. It was almost a relief to find that the sitting room on the first floor was furnished with bits of this and that, or I'd have set the rent for the rooms well beyond an honest detective's purse. Oh, the place was comfortable enough, to be sure, and nothing in it had been allowed to become shabby. But the curtains had been mended, and the woodwork bore nicks beneath the polish. And no two pieces matched - not even the chairs at the table near the window.

Doctor Watson and Mr. Holmes had just risen from a meal when I arrived, for their plates were still upon the table. Breakfast, I judged, from the empty toast rack and the scent of shaving soap still fresh on the two lodgers. Holmes was dressed in his usual suit of black, but Dr. Watson was still in his dressing gown – a silken peacock blue that brought out the color of his eyes. He exchanged it for his suit jacket, heavy brown wool like his trousers, whilst Holmes provided me with a drink and a cigar (which must have been the doctor's, judging by its quality) and settled me in a chair by the fire and invited me to regale them with my story. My attention was on the doctor, else I might have taken better note of the way that Mr. Holmes had seemed to expand into affability when I announced my conclusions. It was always his way, and I'll tell you that when one of us _did_manage to solve our cases before him he'd a pout that would do a three-year-old child proud. Very pretty it was, too, and always made me want to kiss it better.

But as I've said, I was watching the doctor, and he was watching Sherlock Holmes. There was a light in Dr. Watson's eye as he studied his fellow lodger that made me want to draw his attention away somehow. Because there was no denying that Mr. Holmes was preening. He kept glancing over to see how the Doctor was taking things, and hardly seemed to care a lick about all the work I'd done in uncovering the history of Enoch Drebber's last night on Earth.

There's nothing like a good joke to catch a man's attention, and I thought of a good one then. Lestrade had taken a different angle on the case than I, and given my premature confidence in my success, I slapped my thigh and shared the joke, laughing, until the doctor's eyes were fixed on me. It was Dr. Watson, not Sherlock Holmes, who asked me about my clue, and it was to him that I found myself explaining all I'd said and done. Oh, I kept half an eye on Holmes – that was only natural – but I found myself wanting to get a smile out of Watson.

I got no more than nods, however, and was content with them, for the Doctor has the gift of listening with all his attention, only glancing over now and then when Holmes would make an interjection. He likes to think he's teaching us our jobs, does Mr. Sherlock Holmes, but I was in no mood to mind it. I had my man locked safe away, and thought me to have finally impressed the amateur with the plain truth that there were things I could be teaching him.

So I thought, and that I had one up on Lestrade as well, but then that very man turned up at Baker Street and the news he brought threw all my notions awry.

* * *

Bless me if I can tell you why I turned my steps toward Baker Street after the morning I'd had. A pub would have done me better, you would think, and so would I, most days, but the murder of Joseph Stangerson shook me right out of thinking anything except to wonder how many more bodies would be strewn across London before this murderer was through. I'd half a mind to put a notice in the papers, warning every American visitor to our shores against him.

But so public a step required more evidence of a pattern than a poisoning and a stabbing – I'd no desire to have my name attached to cries of unnecessary hysteria – and so it was to Baker Street I went.

Tobias Gregson was there before me, ensconced in a chair by the fire with an air of self-congratulation, a cigar in one hand and a glass of whisky in the other. I wasn't glad to see him, nor Doctor Watson neither, for I wished to consult Sherlock Holmes in private. But what I had to say wouldn't stay between my teeth, no matter the audience.

Gregson jumped to his feet at my news and spilled his drink, dismay all over his face, and Sherlock Holmes pursed his lips and drew down his brow as if already adding the death of Stangerson to his collection of data. But I saw Dr. Watson go a shade paler, and as I found myself a chair and invited myself into their council of war, he pushed himself upright and went to pour a finger of whisky into a glass. I thought he might be bracing himself, but no, the glass was for me, and glad I was to have it while I recounted my discoveries of the morning.

When Holmes leapt upon the question of the pills I had found in room, it was mere chance that I had them in my pocket. Properly, I should have turned them in to the nearest police station, along with the rest of Stangerson's possessions. But he lit up so bright at the mention of them it never occurred to me not to hand them over. You'll say as it's a damned fool thing to do, encouraging Sherlock Holmes when he's in high good humor, but I did it as much for the look on his face as to find an answer to the mystery. After the morning I'd had, I needed a bit of something else to think on, and watching Mr. Holmes expand and wave his arms about always guarantees the topic. It was all I could do to assume an expression of impatient tolerance as he arranged his demonstration with the dog.

Dr. Watson, who didn't have any superiors to answer to if he was outsmarted by a youngster, didn't bother to mask his interest. When he brought up the ancient terrier in his arms and settled it on a cushion on the floor, he was all but kneeling at Mr. Holmes's feet like a supplicant appealing to a prelate for absolution, or a rentboy engaged in the sort of activities that would require the same. He got an eyeful too, and Holmes was too busy mixing up his concoctions and hinting at his conclusions to notice.

When the first dose failed to kill the dog, Holmes fretted a bit and ran his fingers through his hair, which cheered Gregson and I considerably. There's nothing like a hint of dissolution to make a man like Mr. Holmes more human and attainable. But when the second dose worked, and Mr. Holmes began to glory in his own cleverness, well, then I didn't know whether to kill him or kiss him.

Tobias Gregson (as I found out afterwards) had an innocent man sitting in jail, so I think his vote might have been for the former, because he piped up and told Mr. Holmes to stop shilly-shallying and tell us who the murderer was. But Sherlock Holmes, with a fresh audience to perform for, had committed himself to finishing the job without a proper hint to those of us whose job it was to see the murderer brought to heel. I'll give the doctor credit, for he was as anxious to have justice done as any of us and said so, which had more influence on Sherlock Holmes than any pretty speech that Gregson or I might make.

He very nearly capitulated. In fact, he as much as said as he would be willing to take the blame for another murder, rather than give us the name of the man we sought, and for all that two inspectors of Scotland Yard were in the room, it was the doctor he was looking at all the time he spoke.

Gregson flushed up like a girl whose beau is courting another, and I saw green myself. That's not the way our work with Mr. Holmes had gone before, when a half-crown added to the fee might be all he was after. We might still have begun negotiations, except that no sooner had Mr. Holmes declared himself than his plans came to fruition. First thing we all know, he's got a pair of darbies on a cabman that's come up to help him with some baggage and announcing to all the world that he's got the murderer. Next moment the cabman is trying to go out the window, and there was nothing for it but to drag him back inside. And didn't that start a fine row-de-dow!

Jefferson Hope – for that was the cabman's name – fought like a demon. He had long legs, and wasn't shy about using them, nor his fists, and only Sherlock Holmes among us had the length of arm to deal blows back within his guard. That might be why Hope used his bound arms first to knock Mr. Holmes away before elbowing me in the head and driving a boot into Gregson's middle. Holmes fell back, but might have recovered if it weren't for tripping over the dead dog and landing with a clatter among the fire irons.

As if that were his cue, Dr. Watson let out a growl and came at Hope low, like a rugby player taking out an opponent. He couldn't take Hope down without knocking Gregson and I off our feet as well, but he seemed to think the gain worth the cost.

I was already half-hard from watching Mr. Holmes waving his elegant hands around as he pontificated, and I soon grew harder in all that tangle of legs. And arms. I will say this for a prolonged wrestling match – it does give a man opportunities to put his hands where they might never wander elsewise, and who am I to pass up an opportunity?

Mind you, it wasn't always easy to tell just whose anatomy I was feeling.  
Some of it I didn't sort until after the battle. Mr. Holmes, as I've always thought, was long and lean, and just a bit excited from the fray, and was carrying the family jewels in a purse of ordinary proportions. The doctor, well, his bag was bigger than most, and the rest was broad and blunt and a bit more than a mouthful as he stiffened. But it was Tobias Gregson's attributes which gave me a surprise.

It happened like this. We'd been shaken off of Jefferson Hope for the third time and he was trying to get up again and had got as far as hands and knees, so I threw myself over his legs and left Sherlock Holmes to try to capture his head. No sooner had I landed than Gregson threw his weight on top of mine. Well, I'll tell you, I'd wondered about Tobias before then, but only in the way that I did about any man who I think might be willing to take the back stairs. I sure wasn't expecting the great truncheon that was poking me a bare few inches from where it might have done some good!

Well, that was the end of any chance I might be able to stay discreet myself, for I hadn't gone from half mast to full flags flying that quick since I was a youngster. It was very nearly painful, but it hurt Gregson more than me, for the distraction let Jefferson Hope hurl us off again and when we closed with him again, the felon brought up one of his long legs and gave Gregson a knee in the crotch.

Gregson fell back, gasping and clutching at what I had only just discovered might prove his best quality, and I gave up any thought of subduing Hope kindly. I went straight for his neckerchief, twisting it until he couldn't breathe, and might have gone on twisting if Dr. Watson hadn't caught me by the hands and roared into my ears that Mr. Holmes had tied a towel around the prisoner's feet and we had him safely trapped now.

* * *

_Watson gives himself little credit in his account of the aftermath of our battle with Jefferson Hope. The plain truth is that he was the first of us to reach his feet. I was nursing a twisted knee and Inspector Gregson was doubled up over a bad blow. Lestrade, having subdued Jefferson Hope, sat on the rug with his head in his hands, recovering his composure. But Watson pulled himself up by means of a chair and set about checking on each of the combatants. He even straightened up the body of Mrs. Hudson's little dog and wrapped it in its blanket (which, given the state of our window and our sitting room, probably saved us from ignominious eviction.) By then, of course, we'd caught our breaths and our prisoner had gone from rage to a preternatural calm. I was paying most of my attention to him, of course, since it had occurred to me that he must have recognised the address from my advertisement about the ring, but I did notice the unusual solicitousness which Lestrade displayed as he and Watson got Gregson back to his feet._

* * *

Winning a fight, I've found, has a salutary effect, at least for me, especially a scrum like that one had been, but cleaning up the damage soon exhausted my valetudinarian resources. Gregson had been excited, I'd noticed during the fray, but an unfortunate blow had left him quite unenthusiastic, and he was limping as we made our way down the stairs. Inspector Lestrade, on the other hand, was still finding discreet ways to block the evidence of his distended anatomy right up until the moment we made our way down to the cab and he took up the reins. Come to think of it, he probably volunteered to drive because it would be cooler up there. Or cooling.

If Sherlock Holmes had found the battle stimulating, it showed mostly in the shine in his eyes and the bounce in his step. He ushered Jefferson Hope into the cab almost gently, and then turned to assist Inspector Gregson and myself as well, as if his success would not be complete without an audience to approve it.

I can't say as I approved of the gesture when Sherlock Holmes loosed Jefferson Hope's feet again, knowing from experience how hard the man's knees were. I stayed well away, as long as I could, but there isn't much room in a growler, and I was more than glad to be sat alongside the prisoner and let Sherlock Holmes take the seat opposite.

We soon found out why Jefferson Hope was willing to be taken, though, or Doctor Watson did. The man was dying. He _wanted_to tell his story. Why he couldn't have just turned himself in without trying to leave me singing soprano in the choir, I don't know. I let Lestrade explain the charges to the duty inspector, and take the notes too. He didn't fuss about doing all the work, and much to my surprise, he made sure to write in my name on the charge papers. On another day he'd have left it to me to ensure that I was mentioned, but on another day, I'd have done the same to him.

Without anything to do with my hands as Jefferson Hope told his tale, I spent my time watching Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes. The doctor is a fine, considerate man, and listened to the story with his full attention. When the prisoner asked for water, he shook his head to signal me to keep my seat and went to the pitcher and glass himself. Sherlock Holmes had his long legs stretched out in front of him and was leaning back like a boy in school. He was bored with the love story, I think, but he watched his captive with a proprietary air, only glancing now and then to Watson, as if to see how his fellow lodger was taking his success.

It was not the look of a lover. But it might become one, in time. Lestrade saw it too, and for a moment our eyes met. He flushed and looked back to his notebook, his shoulders tucking up closer to his ears.

* * *

It seemed a long time before Jefferson Hope finished his tale, and longer still because I had to go back and clean up the bit of shorthand which I'd got wrong after seeing the look in Tobias Gregson's eyes. And that was after seeing the way that Sherlock Holmes was playing up to Dr. Watson. Oh, don't mistake me. It wasn't that our favorite amateur was batting his eyelashes or flirting his tail. I don't think he even realized yet that he was paying any one man in the room more mind than the rest. But it was clear enough to me, and to Tobias too. And from the way that Dr. Watson smiled after Hope was led off to the cells and Mr. Holmes began to prattle about going off to Simpson's for a well-deserved meal, I suspect it was clear to the doctor as well.

We saw the happy couple off, and then I waited while Tobias saw to the release of Arthur Charpentier. I had an offer I wanted to make, but I settled for asking him if he wished to go down to the pub with me. "We deserve a drink," I told him. "And a bite to eat, before we settle down to our reports."

He studied me for a long moment, calculating, for it was a suggestion I'd never made to him in his fifteen years at the Yard, but then he nodded. "It has been a day," he agreed.

We found a quiet corner of the _Crown and Truncheon_ and settled down to our beer and stew in an amiable silence. But after a time, Tobias began to chuckle. "Did you see the look in his eyes?" he asked, and I didn't have any need to ask who was meant.

I snorted into my beer. "Like a sailor in sight of a new port of call," I agreed. "All ready to put on his best suit of clothes for going ashore."

"And the doctor all ready to greet him when he reaches land," Gregson said, with a wry twist to his lips. "If I'd have thought that it took telling Sherlock Holmes that he's a clever man to turn his head I'd have done it long ago."

"Me too," I said, "though it would have been like taking coals to Newcastle. Mr. Holmes tells you he's clever ten times a day."

Tobias grinned. "Not clever enough," he said. I raised an eyebrow at him and he grinned all the more. "How long do you think it will be before he realizes just how he feels about Dr. Watson?"

"Oh, about long enough for the doctor to recover his strength and decide to pin him to the wall," I answered, grinning back.

Tobias cocked his head at me, thoughtfully. "And you'd know about that would you?" he asked.

"I have a certain expertise," I admitted. "Though it's not the sort you'd have to pay for. More of an amateur expertise, if you will."

Tobias nodded slowly and then raised his glass to me. "Here's to expertise, then," he proposed. "And to amateurs, and mysteries solved! It's a red letter day!"

"A red letter day indeed!" I said, raising my glass in return. "We've both managed to deduce something before Mr. Sherlock Holmes!"


End file.
